Yeah, that's right, I said it-F SEO. As in, FORGET SEO. I know this might seem like heresy to generations of online marketers, bloggers, online publishers, and digital entrepreneurs. Who can blame them for having their brains stuck on the past? What's not to like about researching low competition/high volume keywords, making garbage pages based on these keywords, posting them up on low quality pages, spinning a gazillion keyword-coded articles and using bots to submit them to thousands of low-quality sites? In other words, what's not to like about the old model of “low effort/high reward”? The answer is, I'm sorry to say to the huge number of webmasters who miss the old “easy” days of Google, PLENTY.

For far too long, the actual Internet user has been the unlucky victim caught in the crossfire between “online businessmen” looking to make a quick buck and unafraid of cutting as many corners as possible to make money and the harsh, relentless, and unforgiving hammer of Google. There are way too many web publishers behind low quality sites out there and it seems that they are caught in never ending arms race with Google as to how many low quality digital crap they can churn out before Google catches up to them and sends them back to the basement. Sadly, these guys get caught, they make a new network and the same sad cycle starts again. Rinse and repeat.

The Day of SEO Judgment is Here and guess who's Guilty?

Well, it looks like the Day of Judgment has finally come in the form of a … Penguin. And it has many veterans of the “Let's Pimp Google” wars shaking in their digital boots. Locked in a fatal combination with content-sensitive Panda, link-sensitive Penguin has dragged many previously quality-resistant crap sites down to the pits of Google's bowels where they belong. All of a sudden, so many web developers caught the Old Time Religion of putting the customer first. But that's where they should have been in the first place.

Forget content is king. Definitely forget about traffic being king. No, in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and a highly mobile Internet consumer space-it's all about the User being King. Sadly, for far too long webpage developers have been treating their users like cops on Rodney King. No royal treatment there.

That's right. All the stuffed keyword pages are no longer going to cut it if your site's visitors vote against you with their clicks. Google is watching, just like an ominous evil Darth Vader, constantly keeping an eye on how your sites' visitors react to your value offering. And boy is Google all too eager to bring the heavy penalty hammer hard on your site's head. Now it's beginning to look like it was not such a hot idea to fill your pages with crap content that doesn't answer your visitor's concerns. Now it looks totally dumb to stuff your pages with ads or squeeze pages. The good news is that is never too late. That's right-you can turn your site around.

Rediscovering your site's Customer

The first step to post-Penguin recovery is to forget SEO and focus solely on your visitors. Figure out who they are demographically.

What are they looking for?

How do they want to be treated?

What do they like about your site?

What do they hate?

Find the answers to these questions and get ready for some heavy lifting as you tweak your site's layout and content to match your users' needs. Run A/B tests and see which produces greater engagements. Turn on comments. Listen to your readers. Experiment with content based on their page reading patterns and see if your hunches are correct. If they are, keep building and see if you can keep your users on your site longer and see if you can get them to talk more about your site. If your hunches are wrong, keep tweaking your site and see if you can see any improvements. Keep trying and get ready to fail. Each and every failure is just a stepping stone to the ultimate goal you're looking for-building a site that will have a loyal following for many years to come.In this day and age of “Live by Google/Die by Google,” having a site with a large base of loyal visitors who aren't going anywhere anytime soon isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, it has become your only source of assurance against the topsy turvy hiccups of search engines.

This guest post was written by Chris Walker, an avid blogger, advertising copywriter, and Internet observer. Follow him on Twitter @MceDotCom

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